


The Beginning

by KestrelShrike



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-28 02:10:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12595788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KestrelShrike/pseuds/KestrelShrike
Summary: Falling in love is always a curious process. Falling in love when you come from the background that Tabris does is even more so.





	The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninaunn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninaunn/gifts).



She doesn’t like him. Not at first. It’s almost enough to make her regret not killing him, but something held her back. Does she regret it now? Maybe. Sometimes. Often, if she is honest. He is insolent, witty, and far too charming. She can name her own problems, but chooses not to, pinning them all on that night that is not distant enough in the past, Shianni’s face fixed in her memory. She doesn’t trust men, not truly, but she trusts Zevran least of all. It is best to keep her face grim and to simply keep her feet marching forward, searching for something that will help her make sense of everything. 

***

He is intriguing, and that’s the worst part. Tabris wants to keep her distance, mourning a husband and a life that could have been (or, more accurately, mourning that she never had a choice in what happened to her.) Despite that, there’s something about him that draws her back, something beneath the bravado he projects. There’s something more to the Crows, and his tales of Antiva are so different from what life had been in the alienage. When he says he misses the leather, part of her understands- there are scents of home that never leave you, except to make you yearn. For her, it’s the way the Vhenadahl smells after the rain, how it briefly makes everything like a forest, rather than a cesspit. 

***

She sees things in the Fade. Things she never wanted to see again. She sees him, and saves him, but it all has the quality of a dream. 

***

Tabris is intimately acquainted with men of Zevran’s type, full of bluster and grand talk, all their stories taking on the quality of a story for children, inflated far beyond what life really is. His stories are particularly bad, tinged with an air of exoticism, intrigue, and sex that sounds worse than even the tallest of tales Tabris had heard in the alienage. And yet. 

And yet. 

Why does she find herself going to him after a battle, even before she’s washed of the blood, before she debriefs with the others? Exhaustion is writ into all their features from their battle at the mages’ tower. “Tell me about being a Crow.” It’s less a request than a demand, refusing to relent to the fact that Zevran might, in fact, be slightly interesting. 

It’s easy to justify it. 

“Teach me to be an assassin.” No matter what she thinks about him, there’s no denying that Zevran has a special skill with knives that Tabris can only hope to master. His hands are swift, fingers so long and fine and… no. Every hurt she’s ever experienced comes rushing back. Shianni’s face is still cemented in her mind, and she turns herself away, a cold shoulder he seems to notice but doesn’t comment on. He will teach her about the art of daggers, and that’s it. That is all she needs. 

*** 

Being on guard all the time is exhausting. There are cracks that go down to her very marrow now, a facade that Tabris finds increasingly difficult to keep up. She’s grown close to all of them, despite wanting to keep her distance. They’ve shed blood together, discovered the monsters that inhabited both the world and their own selves, and it felt like they had still only taken the first steps on their journey. In the tavern, it’s easy to feel the fire at her back, hear Isabella’s ribald jokes and crack a smile. It’s infectious, even. 

“So you never mix business with pleasure?” The look on Zevran’s face is surprise, but not as much as Tabris’ own; her hand goes to her mouth to try and block the words that have already emerged. Too much too soon. He is a pretty face, but just that. But is there anything wrong with indulging in a pretty face? He’s treated her kindly, considering. He owes her his life, and without her, he can’t escape the crows. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? 

She tries to hold the halves of herself together and finds them slipping between her fingers. 

*** 

Every muscle in her body aches. Weeks on the road and not all of Tabris has hardened as much as she’d want. She goes to bed sore, wakes up with her muscles still cramped. Rubbing at the knots with her own hands does little; fond memories of the rare baths she could have in the Alienage crowd her mind until it’s all she can think about. The way the lukewarm water would rise up and over her head, the way it made her feel deliciously languid. 

A massage. His fingers are long and his hands are fine. He’s not deft enough to pick most locks, though he tries with a smile and a self-deprecating shrug, but he doesn’t need to be particularly deft to reach all those difficult spots on her spine. 

And if it became something more? That was a form of release too. Besides, it would never happen. Tabris’ guard is too high; she tells herself again and again not to trust him.

***

It was not just a massage.  
***

There are definitions to put on things, though Zevran claims it is up to her. The power lies in Tabris’ hands and she doesn’t know what to make of it. Things have changed after the night in the tent; when she looks at him, her heart gives a painful squeeze, though her head still screams not to trust. But why can’t it just be this? Can this be enough? 

They have indeed come very far from the early days, when Zevran sought to put a knife in her back and Tabris may have sought the same. Now they look at each other with, if not trust, then something akin to it. There is respect and lust and something else entirely that defies definition. 

Maybe there will be something more at the end of this path. At night, she sits next to Zevran, and her hand finds his, feeling his callouses. They talk about Antivan leather again, boots she’ll find for him one day, and things she misses from home. They talk of anything but the future. Their future, her future, what Zevran wants. 

It’s a start.


End file.
